


Genus and Species

by 27dragons, tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Dinosaurs, Established Relationship, M/M, Robots, Space Stone, Time Stone, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26030251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tangling with Thanos has landed Bucky and Tony somewhere -- or somewhen -- they don’t know. No, Tony, you can’t bring the dinosaur home and keep it as a pet.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 38
Kudos: 337
Collections: StarkBucksBingo2020, Tony Stark Flash Bingo





	Genus and Species

**Author's Note:**

> Tony Stark Flash Bingo (Aug) - Thanos (both)  
> Starkbucks Bingo - I3: “I got nothing” (27dragons)  
> O4: Time Travel (to the Future) (tisfan)

When Bucky opened his eyes, all he could see was green in all directions. At first he thought that was just the remainder of the Time Stone’s power. Thanos had done… something. No one quite knew what because the battle had been so confusing; the Power Stone blasting purple rays everywhere, the Space Stone moving people out of position, lord only knew what was happening with the Reality Stone. And then there had been a great, green wave of energy--

“Ug,” said someone nearby. It took Bucky a moment to clear his thoughts enough to identify it: Tony. “I feel like a Pride parade just swallowed me whole and then puked me out.” A pause. “Why are we in a jungle?”

“I got nothing,” Bucky said, rolling over to look at Tony. The Iron Man suit was pretty banged up, souvenirs of the battle. “I think-- I’m not sure. Strange was yelling something about a time vortex. It’s hard to understand him under normal circumstances.” Thanos had zapped Bucky with the Mind Stone at least three times, somehow sensing the Winter Soldier would be easier to control. 

Bucky did _not_ appreciate it.

Tony made some kind of noise that was hard to interpret through the suit’s speakers, and then retracted the helmet to look around. “Okay, well, those are deciduous trees, so we haven’t been thrown back more than three hundred million years or so.”

“There are jungles all over the world,” Bucky said, grumbling and getting to his feet. He might only look about thirty-five or so, but there were days he felt all one hundred of his years. Knees. Knees were a thing. Also, poor design. “Any signal?”

Tony made a face and then reformed the helmet. “...Some,” he said. “Nothing I can hook into right away, but there’s something out there.”

“Right, Mulder,” Bucky snarked. “All right, we do this the old fashioned way.” He dug out a set of binoculars and hung them around his neck. “You stay down here, you’re too colorful. Any sniper in the area might want to take a stab at you.” He didn’t necessarily disinclude himself on that list, but the sort of stabbing he had in mind was generally not for polite company. He looked around for a good, tall tree and scrambled up, swinging himself from branch to branch. When he got high enough, he paused, waiting for the wind, so it wouldn’t just be one tree shaking like crazy.

Finally, he breached the canopy and could get a look around.

Jungle.

More freaking bush than he’d seen since Cambodia.

Trees, and trees, and more trees. In the distance, he made out a mountain (also covered in trees) and a break in the trees that was either a road or a river. 

Something was moving.

Bucky turned the binocs in that direction. Something big was moving. Trees swayed and crunched. Something really damn big. Bucky could feel the vibrations of its footsteps in the tree he was clinging to. 

“Clear,” he yelled, and then just let go. He could handle drops up to fifty feet without too much trouble, and the ground here was soft and springy.

He’d just reached Tony’s side when the something fucking roared. Like a tiger crossed with an elephant and the size of a blue whale.

“That’s a dinosaur,” Bucky said with forced calm. “We should get the heck to shelter, like, yesterday.”

“What kind of dinosaur?” Tony wondered. “Might be an herbivore. That would be cool, actually.”

“May I remind you that the current contenders for biggest, meanest land animals are moose and hippos, and they’re both herbivores,” Bucky said. “Can we do something productive, like finding a cave, or an overhang, before it sees us, and decides we’re lunch?”

“Oh, fine.” Tony tossed a couple of microcameras up onto the trees where they clung like particularly bright insects, then turned in a slow circle. “Infrared suggests some hollow rock in that direction,” he said, pointing. “If there’s not a natural entrance, we can make one.”

Bucky nodded, then took point. It bothered him a little that there wasn’t someone taking up the rear between Tony and whatever was out there, and reminded himself that Tony was an experienced fighter, and he had a suit of armor, which was pretty damn tough. 

The whatever it was sped up, moving at them-- Bucky tipped his head to one side while he ran the math. Nearly thirty miles per hour. Bucky picked up the pace a little bit. On flat ground, Bucky could run almost sixty miles per hour, but this was not flat. Nor was it a good plan for him to expend that much energy before they had any idea what they were up against, or if there was much in the way of food in the nearby vicinity.

“Got your cave, ten o’clock,” Bucky said. There was a bit of a clearing and then they could squeeze in, one at a time. “How far back does it--”

Bucky stopped as the -- freaking hell -- dinosaur came crashing out of the jungle, about six meters high and full of teeth.

“That,” he said, firmly, “is a dinosaur. I don’t care what you just said about the deciduous thingies.”

“There were deciduous trees long before there were dinosaurs,” Tony said distractedly. He was looking up at the dinosaur, his head cocked. “It’s not a dinosaur, though.”

“Okay, you go out and tell it that it don’t exist,” Bucky snapped. “If it’s going to eat us, does species _really_ matter?”

“The species doesn’t matter,” Tony said. “What matters is that it’s a _robot_. I don’t think we’ve gone back in time at all. I think we went _forward._ ”

Bucky stared at him. “I fail to see how this is an improvement in any way.” Probably worse, honestly. Dinosaurs were at least skin and bone and nerve endings. And most living things were afraid of fire.

“Dinosaurs are your department, sweetheart,” Tony said. “Robots are _mine_. Get in the cave and stay out of its sight.” Without waiting for a response, he launched into the air, a wide, spiraling path that would take him around the dinosaur-robot-thing a few times before he reached the level of its head.

Bucky slid into the shadows where he could still watch, sighing. “If you bring back a giant dino-shaped robot from the future as a pet and say ‘can we keep it’ I promise you, Steve is gonna kill you.”

“Not if my pet dino-robot eats him first,” Tony said cheerfully, even as he swerved to avoid the thing’s lunging bite. He dipped and spun and wound up clinging to the dino-robot’s back.

The dino-robot was extremely unamused by the sudden disappearance of its prey. It whirled and snapped, clipping several branches as big around as Bucky’s arm with all the ease of a hedge-trimmer.

Tony was muttering under his breath, technical terms that made no sense even when Bucky knew what they meant, because they weren’t connected to each other, just little fragments of sentences and thoughts, punctuated with occasional grunts as the dinosaur made various attempts to dislodge him.

“You got an EMP grenade?” he called down after what seemed like hours and was probably no more than a minute or two.

Bucky stuffed his left hand into his satchel, the sensor array in his fingertips cataloging his equipment neatly. “Two. You want me to throw it, or lend it to ya?” EMP grenades were pretty good against Doombots, their occasional throw downs with raging maniacs like Doc Ock, and more than a few times against the US military who had a perpetual boner for shooting at the Hulk.

“Toss it up here,” Tony said. “This thing runs on a-- oof! --slightly different frequency than the ones we’re used to, I need to do a mod.”

“I don’t know about you, smart-guy,” Bucky said. He dashed across the clearing, rolling when he got to the far side, “but I am not _used to_ giant robo-dinosaurs.” He threw the grenade with such precision that Tony only had to hold out his hand to be able to catch it.

“Perfect, good throw,” Tony said, because he was consistently amazed at Bucky’s aim. (And Clint’s, if Bucky had to be honest.) He let go of the dinosaur’s back and shot up higher into the sky, just out of its reach, hovering in the air as he retracted one gauntlet and started fiddling with the grenade.

After snapping uselessly at Tony a few times, the dino seemed to realize there was something else under its feet. A large snout bent down to snort at Bucky, who promptly punched it in the nose with his left arm. “Bad dino-bot, no biting,” Bucky scolded. The snout didn’t even seem _damaged_. Crap, that was probably bad.

The dino-bot did not _smell_ like a robot. It smelled like rotting meat, probably the result of whatever it had caught in its teeth.

“Almost done!” Tony called. “Hang in there!”

“Whatever you’re doing, do it faster!”

The dino-bot made another lunge for Bucky that he was barely able to dodge by diving behind a large tree. And then he had to roll out of the way again when the dino’s attack knocked the tree over.

The dino roared again. Why did a robot have to roar? That seemed entirely unnecessary.

But as it did, Tony swooped down and chucked the EMP into its mouth, then dropped the rest of the way to the ground to get between it and Bucky. “--two, one.”

“You make a pretty good shield,” Bucky muttered, putting his shoulder to Tony’s spine. They’d discovered a few times, the hard way, that the arm wasn’t always too great at dealing with EMPs either, but the suit made for a good Faraday cage.

The dino-robot closed its mouth, made an entirely biological hiccup sound, and then--

_WHUMP!_

The mouth dropped open.

Very slowly, the dino-bots legs folded--

And it fell over, crushing more trees and wrecking the landscape.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Tony said. “Unless, of course, there are more of them out there. We should probably work on finding a way home so we can kick Thanos’ butt.”


End file.
